Entering the stream

Exploring the Dhamma, as understood from the perspective of the ancient Pali commentaries.
Heavenstorm
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Re: Entering the stream

Post by Heavenstorm »

Dhammanando wrote: 1. As with all the ariyan paths and fruits, the supramundane jhāna at the moment of attaining the path and fruit of non-returning may be at the level of any of the five jhānas.
2. The fact that non-returners are reborn in the Suddhāvāsas is due to their eradication of all the causes for rebirth in the Kāmaloka, but their non-eradication of attachment to the refined material and immaterial spheres.
3. The level of Suddhāvāsa in which a non-returner is reborn is conditioned by his/her development of mundane jhāna in the case of those who have done this.
4. In the case of those who haven't (the bare insight workers), the level will be the lowest, i.e., the Avihā Suddhāvāsa.

Best wishes,
Dhammanando Bhikkhu
Thanks for explanation, but there is a question still bugging me. I can roughly understand how ariyan paths and fruits are corresponded with fivefold material jhanas. However, the question is why leave the immaterial jhanas out? Aren't them supposed to be regarded as higher meditative concentrations and hence part of the Buddhist eightfold path as well?
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Dhammanando
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Re: Entering the stream

Post by Dhammanando »

Hi Heavenstorm,
Heavenstorm wrote:Thanks for explanation, but there is a question still bugging me. I can roughly understand how ariyan paths and fruits are corresponded with fivefold material jhanas. However, the question is why leave the immaterial jhanas out? Aren't them supposed to be regarded as higher meditative concentrations and hence part of the Buddhist eightfold path as well?
I don't recall seeing any discussion of why path and fruition consciousnesses are always at the level of rūpa and not arūpa jhāna. My guess would be that it's because the arūpa cittas are not capable of taking any object but the conceptual ones of infinite space, infinite consciousness etc.

Best wishes,
Dhammanando Bhikkhu
Yena yena hi maññanti,
tato taṃ hoti aññathā.


In whatever way they conceive it,
It turns out otherwise.
(Sn. 588)
rowyourboat
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Location: London, UK

Re: Entering the stream

Post by rowyourboat »

i think how a stream entrant has only 7 lives left (at max) belongs to those aspects called 'acinteyya' or unknowable/unthinkable- and is in the real of a buddhas understanding but not those of a mere mortals like us! trying to make sense of this will drive us around the bend! :cookoo:
With Metta

Karuna
Mudita
& Upekkha
amrit
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Re: Entering the stream

Post by amrit »

Dhammanando wrote:Hi Amrit,

Welcome to Dhamma Wheel. I hope you'll benefit from your stay here. In the meantime I should like to ask you to please read the terms of service before posting again. The Classical Theravada Forum is not a suitable venue for delivering homilies.

Best wishes,
Dhammanando Bhikkhu
Dear Dhammanando Bhikkhu,
I think I made a big mistake by adding that post. I arguments lead you nowhere. Knowledge is everywhere and one’s path has to be found by himself or herself, and that’s what I believed. Anyway, I profusely apologize if my statement offended you. I’m leaving this site. May you attain Nibbana soon.
Amrit
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robertk
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Re: Entering the stream

Post by robertk »

Dhammanando wrote:
1. As with all the ariyan paths and fruits, the supramundane jhāna at the moment of attaining the path and fruit of non-returning may be at the level of any of the five jhānas.
2. The fact that non-returners are reborn in the Suddhāvāsas is due to their eradication of all the causes for rebirth in the Kāmaloka, but their non-eradication of attachment to the refined material and immaterial spheres.
3. The level of Suddhāvāsa in which a non-returner is reborn is conditioned by his/her development of mundane jhāna in the case of those who have done this.
4. In the case of those who haven't (the bare insight workers), the level will be the lowest, i.e., the Avihā Suddhāvāsa.

Best wishes,
Dhammanando Bhikkhu
Thank you venerable. Do you have teh referecne for this, teh topic often comes up - especially among doubters of the way of dry-insight.
with respect
Robert
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Dhammanando
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Re: Entering the stream

Post by Dhammanando »

Hi Robert,
robertk wrote:Thank you venerable. Do you have teh referecne for this, teh topic often comes up - especially among doubters of the way of dry-insight.
with respect
I was actually going from memory, but it's lucky you asked because after checking with Gethin's Summary of the Topics of Abhidhamma I now think I've made some mistakes. I'll post a corrected version this evening.

Best wishes,
Dhammanando Bhikkhu
Yena yena hi maññanti,
tato taṃ hoti aññathā.


In whatever way they conceive it,
It turns out otherwise.
(Sn. 588)
Element

Re: Entering the stream

Post by Element »

Chris wrote:I recall a comment in Sutta study with Bhante Dhammasiha a few weeks back, where (my recall - possibly incomplete) it was stated that the attainment of Stream Entry was not the 'walk in the park' many people thought it was ~ it follows that Stream Entry is the most difficult achievement of all. A little depressing for those of us still suffering from attraction to worldly activities and wandering-mind in meditation. :(

metta and respect,
Chris
Hello Chris

In the suttas, most accounts of stream entry I can recall occured from listening. For example, Kondanna in the First Sermon, Upatissa (Sariputta) when listening to Assaji or Upali listening to the Buddha in MN 56. All of the these stream enters had the same realisation of: "All that is subject to arising is subject to cessation." It therefore appears the suttas disagree with your opinion Stream Entry is the most difficult achievement of all.

Regarding wandering-mind in meditation, clearly the suttas say sensual desire or attraction to worldly activities are a hindrance to meditation. However, as one makes a conscious choice to both partake in worldly activities and ignore the advice of the Buddha, then I cannot see what there is to be depressed out. Buddha taught about equinimity, to reflect: "I am the heir to my actions, born of my actions".

Whilst stream entry has never been declared to be difficult in the suttas, Buddha did say an effort must be made. In the Saccasamyutta in the SN, there is a series of suttas for which the Buddha ends with the exhortation: "Therefore monks, an effort should be made....regarding the Four Noble Truths...this is your duty".

In the Noble Eightfold Path there is the teaching of the Four Right Efforts. Also, in the suttas there are many teachings to help with attraction to worldly activities, such as MN 22, MN 54, AN 5.57 & the meditations on loathsomeness & contemplation of death. Buddha has advised implicity AN 5.57 should be reflected upon, whether one is a woman or a man, lay or ordained.

In Classic Theravada, there is the teaching about giving a suitable meditation object to a person based on their tendancies. For example, clearly one with a sensual or accumulative tendencies should be meditating upon, studying and practising in a way that is non-accumulative. For example, study and reciting large tracts of Abidhamma may possibly not be suitable for one with accumulative and sensual tendencies.

The Buddha strongly recommended the contemplation of impermanence as the way to stream entry, as found in the Viññana Sutta and other suttas in the Okkanta-samyutta on Entering.

With metta

Element

[Flippant comment on Abhidhamma deleted. Element, please read the terms of service. — Dhammanando]
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Ben
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Re: Entering the stream

Post by Ben »

Element wrote:In the suttas, most accounts of stream entry I can recall occured from listening. For example, Kondanna in the First Sermon, Upatissa (Sariputta) when listening to Assaji or Upali listening to the Buddha in MN 56. All of the these stream enters had the same realisation of: "All that is subject to arising is subject to cessation." It therefore appears the suttas disagree with your opinion Stream Entry is the most difficult achievement of all.
Hi Element

I disagree with the logic of your assertion.
...the striking feature which runs through many of the biographical sketches that we will encounter in this volume: the astonishing speed and suddenness which the great disciples attain realization. The wanderer Sariputta, for example, on his first meeting with a Budhist monk, became a stream-enterer while listening to a four-line stanza. Mahakaccana, while still a court brahmin, attained arahantship at the end of a discourse by the Buddha. The royal consort, Khema attained arahantship even while still wearing her regal attire. At first impulse one might be tempted to dismiss such rapid attainments as just another example of hagiographic fervor, but when we take the samsaric background into account we can then see that such instances of 'sudden enlightenment' are by no means as fortuitous as they might appear. Their abrupt occurrence is not a defiance of the normal laws of spiritual growth but the culmination of a long, slow process of prior preparation - spread out over countless lives against a vast cosmic backdrop - that nurtured all the requisites of enlightenment to maturity. It was because the disciples brought along, unknown even to themselves, such rich accumulations of merit and wisdom from their past existences that their initial encounter with the Buddha and his Dhamma could prove so immediately efficacious.

-- Great Disciples of the Buddha: their lives, their works, their legacy, by Nyaniponika Thera, Hellmuth Hecker and edited by Bhikkhu Bodhi, Wisdom Publications
“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”
- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:
in mountain clefts and chasms,
loud gush the streamlets,
but great rivers flow silently.
- Sutta Nipata 3.725

Compassionate Hands Foundation (Buddhist aid in Myanmar) • Buddhist Global ReliefUNHCR

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Element

Re: Entering the stream

Post by Element »

Ben wrote: Hi Element

I disagree with the logic of your assertion.
Hi Ben

I disagree with the logic of your assertion.

At the moment craving & attachment are abandoned, natural law follows the mind must enter the stream to Nibbana.

I do not mean craving & attachment are suppressed. I mean abandoned.

Kind regards

Element
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